Death, Statistics, and Politics

From April 24, 1980 to December 31, 2000 the United States saw 448,060 of her citizens die from AIDS. This resulted in protests, sit-ins, an AIDS Quilt, and massive politicization. That is an average of 22,403 deaths per year.

The same period saw an average of 41,400 people die from the flu each year. There is no flu politics. There are no flu protests. There is no Flu Quilt. Why not?

A couple of days ago, in Texas, a sick man killed a bunch of kids and teachers in a school. And it isn't the first school shooting. The first school shooting I remember hearing about happened in Columbine, and it inspired a movie. From then until this week there have been been a bunch of school shootings. Here is a list of school (Kindergarten through university) shootings designated as "mass shootings" by the F.B.I. (There might be more but this is all I could find.):

Date (Deaths) Location

4/1999 (13) Columbine High School
3/20000 (9) Red Lake High School
10/2006 (5) West Nickel Mines Amish High School
4/2007 (32) Virginia Tech
2/2008 (5) Northern Illinois University
4/2012 (7) Oikos University
12/2012 (27) Sandy Hook Elementary School
5/2014 (6) University of California Santa Barbara
10/2014 (4) Marysville-Pulchick High School
10/2015 (9) Umpqua Community College
2/2018 (17) Marjory Stoneman Douglas Highschool
5/2018 (10) Santa Fe High School
11/2021 (4) Oxford High School
5/2022 (21) Robb Elementary School
TOTAL: 167
YEARLY AVERAGE DEATHS FROM SCHOOL MASS SHOOTINGS: 7.59


There is a political movement to require licensing of gun owners, banning of certain guns, there are marches that oppose the right to bear arms, there are politicians giving speaches and introducing bills, and there are activist organizations agitating for the abolition of private ownership of guns. They even have quilts.

During the same period of time hundreds of Americans were killed by lightning. In 2021 there were 42,915 people killed in vehicles on America's roads. That is just one year!!! Are there marches protesting this?
In 2019 (the last year for which I could find the number) there were 5,333 Americans killed by injuries at work. Are there grandstanding politicians? No. Are protesters marching in the streets? No. There is just one labor union that is trying to do anything about it.

We don't panic over the numbers of people dying on the roads, at work, from lightening, the flu, or from drowning. And we shouldn't freak out over school shootings. Kids in schools are safe, at least, from mass killings by gunfire. So why are people on the news and in the Democratic Party acting like they aren't? I don't believe it is because they want to save lives. If it were they would be opposed to abortion on demand (629,898 killed in 2019) in America. No, I think this, like the AIDS movement is about something other than saving lives.